


On The Arrow

by withmyradio



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, F/M, Romance, fuzzy math, probably ridiculous physics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-03-16 04:03:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3473720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withmyradio/pseuds/withmyradio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When mathematician Charlotte Warren is accused of collaborating with her Russian physicist ex-boyfriend to bring about a nuclear holocaust, she draws the attention of Section D – and one team member in particular.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is set within the first few episodes of Season 7, after Lucas has just returned to England. All Russian comes from Google Translate so... Sorry if it's nonsense.

_It will make sense_  Charlotte tells herself as she sits still and quiet at her desk. There are patterns in her mind; she can see them behind her eyelids. And they will make sense, they will, if she just thinks. If she just falls into them. They always do sooner or later, not that it matters which. She’ll sit here all night, and all day, and all night again, until she falls into them and they fall into place and she knows. Still… Quiet…

Brrrrrrrring! Brrrrrrrring! Brrrrrrrring! 

Her stillness, her quiet, is broken by the sound of her mobile, and whatever epiphany she was poised on the edge of vanishes. She’d be irritated, intensely so, except the name on the screen is so dear and familiar and welcome that all she can feel is delight. 

“Алексей!” she exclaims, and her accent is atrocious but she knows he’ll appreciate the effort. “Как дела?!”

“Чарли, я облажался.” Alexei’s voice is no louder than a whisper and flat, so completely flat. “Я облажался так плохо, и мне очень жаль.”

“What did you fuck up?” Her Russian is both rudimentary and rusty, but of course the curse words linger long after everything else is gone. “What are you sorry for?”

“Возьмите подарок, который я послал вас, и бежать,” he says urgently, his quiet words coming so close together they’re practically on top of each other. “Скрыть. Скрыть!”

She can identify a few words, “gift” and “hide”, though why he’d want her to hide the nifty TARDIS keychain he’d posted her for Christmas, she has no idea.

“Alexei, English, please!” she begs, though now she’s a little worried. His English deserts him when he’s nervous, she knows, and there is something in the tone of his voice that frightens her. 

“Беги! Прячься! Мне жаль. Я люблю тебя.”

The line is suddenly, inexplicably dead, and Charlotte stares at the phone in her hand. She has a very bad feeling about this… 

Before she can call him back, there is a slight sound in her living room. It isn’t loud at all, and she doubts she’d have noticed it except the uneasiness caused by Alexei’s phone call has put all her senses on high alert. In all likelihood it’s just her cat frisking about with a toy, but –

Her office door flies open, revealing a tall, dark haired man. He has pale skin, blue eyes and the kind of face that makes her distressingly aware of her own utter plainness. He also has a gun, which perhaps she ought to have noticed first, especially considering that it’s trained on her. It sits easily in his large hand, elegant fingers cradling it with nonchalance, careless of the deadly power at their command.

“Не шевелись,” he says. His voice is the sonic equivalent of his austere, perfect features, and despite her general hopelessness with Russian, this one she knows: Don’t move.

“I have no intention of moving,” she assures him, meeting his gaze. As soon as she does, she wishes she hadn’t; the intensity in his piercing eyes is almost painful. But she forces herself to maintain that contact. She is afraid, of course she’s afraid, but she has her pride.

“Good.” Flawless English tinged with a Northern accent makes her suspect he isn’t Russian at all.

With an almost feline grace and speed he draws near, and the needle of his syringe is already in her neck by the time she realizes he’s holding something in his free hand. She blinks up at him, tongue too heavy to form words, and his too-blue eyes are the last thing she sees before the world fades to black.


	2. Chapter 2

“She received a call from Zaytsev just before you took her,” a voice says, coming to her as though from very far away, or underwater. She’d be the one underwater, Charlotte supposes, based on how weighed down her whole body feels. Her lungs ache with the effort of breathing.

“He was already in custody?” There’s something familiar about that second voice, though she can’t quite think what. 

“Yes, we think so. But the call was too short to trace.” 

Her eyelids flutter without her consent, and she curses herself even as she can’t resist the impulse to move. If her body had been more firmly under her own control, she’d have let them think she was unconscious as long as they wanted to keep talking, but as it is they notice immediately.

“Get Harry,” the familiar voice says, and she hears footsteps followed by the sound of a door slamming.

She opens her eyes to find herself filled with a sense of déjà vu; painfully blue eyes are boring into hers, just as she remembers from before she slipped into unconsciousness. The intensity from before is there as well, along with an icy coldness that has nothing to do with their color.

Uneasily, she attempts to shift in place, but her arms and legs seem to be tied to a chair. As soon as she realizes this, they begin to ache and throb, and she wonders just how long she’s been sitting there. Long enough for her hands to go completely numb, at least, and for everything else to hurt. 

“This is all so unnecessary,” she slurs, and the man raises a single, skeptical eyebrow. 

“Is it?” 

“Yes. Drugging me… Also very unnecessary. You had a gun,” she reminds him. “I would have gone with you.” 

He seems to evaluate her statement for a moment before shrugging his broad shoulders, though why she should notice their breadth when she clearly has more important things to worry about, she isn’t sure. “Couldn’t take that chance.”

“Speaking of chances, any chance you might untie me?” She forces a note of hopefulness into her voice. “I can’t feel my fingers.”

That, he doesn’t even bother to dignify with a response.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“You know who I am,” he tells her, and she squeezes her eyes shut tightly.

“I had a nightmare like this once,” she says. “At university they forced me to take this literature class on Kafka, and I had a nightmare that lecture turned into one of his novels and nothing made any bloody sense. Don’t suppose I’ll be waking up any time soon.”

“I’m afraid not.” 

She opens her eyes and is struck anew by the perfect arrangement of his features, and by their harshness. “What do you want? Or do I know that too?”

“You ought to.”

“I don’t!” she cries, her frustration suddenly welling up inside and overflowing. “I don’t know who you are! I don’t know what you want! I’m of absolutely no use to anyone and there is literally not a single blessed reason for me to be tied to a thrice-damned chair with you glaring at me that way!”

“Of no use to anyone?” he asks sarcastically. “Of course not. You’re only working with Alexei Zaytsev, one of Russia’s top nuclear physicists. Clearly you’re good for nothing.”

“I’m not working with him,” she snaps. “We’re… He’s… It’s complicated, alright? But I’m not a physicist, nuclear or otherwise. I run calculations for him sometimes when the math gets too imaginative for him, that’s all.”

“Imaginative?”

“Yes.” A smile she can’t suppress curves at her mouth. “People don’t realize how creative math can be… It’s an art, really, as much as a science. Alexei is accomplished enough with formulas that have already been written but he isn’t imaginative enough to create his own.” 

“And you are,” the man states, but there’s something almost sarcastic about it. She’s been dealing with such reactions for a long time, her entire academic career, in truth, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t annoy her, and the fact that she’s tied to a chair really doesn’t help.

“Yes. Surely if you took me you know who I am.” 

“Oh, I know.” One corner of his thin yet perfectly shaped lips twists up in something between a smirk and a smile. “I suppose modesty isn’t your strong suit.” 

“I suppose not.”

“So you run calculations for Zaytsev, Russian evil genius –”

“He’s not evil!” she exclaims, glaring. “Wherever would you get that idea?” 

“Believe me, some of the things he’s working on certainly qualify. Some of the things you’re working on together.” 

“I told you, we’re not working on anything together. He just needs a little help with his Cabral-Warren equations, that’s all. And he wouldn’t work on anything evil,” she adds as an afterthought. “He’s not like that.”

“So Cabral-Warren equations are…? What? Too difficult for him?”

“No, he’s fine with them. But there’s a difference between him doing them and me doing them. Obviously.”

Again with the single eyebrow lift. “What’s the difference?”

“I thought you knew who I am?” she taunts. 

“Who you are doesn’t explain –”

Before she can tell him that yes, it does, it explains everything, the door of the interrogation room opens to admit two more men. One is older, balding, and clearly in a position of authority, while the other is closer to her own age and very handsome. He’s even more handsome than her abductor, with his honey-gold hair and bright green eyes nicely highlighted by thick framed glasses.

The man questioning her looks at the older one and raises his eyebrow. Charlotte is pleased to know she’s not the only one subjected to that particular annoyance.

“Who’s this?”

“Big sister sent him,” the man in charge says enigmatically, and her interrogator nods as though this makes perfect sense. “He’s a mathematician, an expert in… What are they?”

“Cabral-Warren forms, especially Cabral-Warren equations,” the younger man supplies.

“We were just discussing those. She claims to be an expert as well.” 

“Oh my god,” she mutters. “You are so dense. You know who I am!”

The bespectacled young man looks at her appraisingly. “There aren’t many experts in Cabral-Warren forms. It’s a very new kind of math.”

“Yes. I know.” She allows herself a small smile; suddenly, she’s almost enjoying this.

“Well, the creators –”

 “Joao Cabral and Charlie Warren,” the older man supplies, with an air of being pleased with himself for having done his homework.

“ _Dr._ Joao Cabral and  _Dr. Charles_  Warren,” Cute Glasses Bloke corrects, and pleased as she is that someone is insisting those with PhDs receive the proper respect, this really has gone on long enough. Besides, it seems as though Scary Blue Eyes is finally catching on and she’s really looking forward to making him look/feel incredibly bloody thick.

“Dr.  _Charlotte_ Warren, actually,” she says, and suddenly she is once more being pierced by those blue, blue eyes. 

“Oh. My. God.” Cute Glasses Bloke is staring at her, utterly stunned. “Are you… You can’t… But you are! I never realized… I mean, ‘Charlie’, I just assumed… What on earth are you thinking, Pearce? You can’t have Dr. Warren tied to a chair like a criminal!” 

“In all likelihood she  _is_  a criminal,” her abductor points out. 

“There must be some mistake.” Behind his thick glasses, the young expert’s eyes are filled with distress and something remarkably like longing.

“Perhaps,” the older man – Pearce – says. “And then again, perhaps not. If these Cabral-Warren forms are necessary for whatever Zaytsev has planned, it’s not exactly a comfort to know that one of the people who created them is working on his side.”

“Look,” she begins, breaking in before anyone else can slander her good name, “allow me to make something clear. I don't know what Alexei is doing precisely, but I know it’s nothing nefarious. I’ve known him since university when he was an exchange student at Oxford –” 

“Are you lovers?” the dark-haired man demands, voice cutting as though to make up for the fact that he’d really bollocksed up his research. 

“ _Lover_  isn’t the word I’d use.” Charlotte laughs and her abductor’s eyes narrow. She doesn’t much notice, too busy remembering the way Alexei had originally propositioned her. He’d put together an actual presentation with 20 slides and a mini-lecture about the equations he’d used to determine he was 97% certain they should have intercourse. He’d been serious. Then again, it had been a very convincing presentation. 

“What word would you use?” Pearce asks. 

“Boyfriend, I guess. We dated for two years until he went back to Russia. We’re still friends. I’m not sure what he’s working on, exactly… The kind of abstract physics he does is incomprehensible to me, although I’d be surprised if it had any real-world applications.” Much like her, Alexei is none too enamored with reality. “He sends me numbers, I run them, that’s it.” 

“Pearce, please,” Cute Glasses Bloke begins, “untie her. She’s a genius. She’s one of the foremost mathematicians in the world. It’s not right to have her tied to a chair.” 

She sends him a grateful smile, and Scary Blue Eyes glares. 

“Very well,” the older man says. “Lucas, untie her. It was probably unnecessary to tie her up in the first place.”

She can’t help but think that  _Lucas_  is a complete misnomer. She’s never seen anyone less light-giving in all her life. Scary Blue Eyes suits him far better. 

“Told you,” she mutters as Lucas bends near to release her bonds. He doesn't even glance at her face, but his fingers brush over her inner wrists as he tugs at the knots and she shivers, telling herself it’s just because his hands are cold. Which they are. 

The young handsome mathematician doesn’t wait for her to be completely freed before coming close and kneeling in front of her. “Dr. Warren, I’m Christian Bythesea. I’m… It’s… It’s such an honor to meet you! I’m so sorry that it’s under such circumstances. Please don’t be concerned about anything; I will alert my higher-ups and they’ll take care of this mess.”

“You can’t promise her that,” Lucas tells him. “If she’s collaborating with the Russians your higher-ups will be as adamant about neutralizing her as anyone.” 

“Dr. Bythesea, of course,” she says, resolutely ignoring the way Lucas says  _neutralizing_ , because she’s pretty sure he means  _executing_ and that’s just silly. “I read your work on applying Cabral-Warren forms to microchip engineering. It was very well done, very exciting.”

Bythesea smiles so widely she worries it might split his face, while Lucas scowls so fiercely she worries it might crack his. “That’s… I mean… I never… I can’t believe you read it. Oh, I wish you hadn’t! My analysis on the linkages between the two disciplines was shoddy at best.” 

“You’re too hard on yourself,” she says kindly. “Like the best of us.”

With a final vicious tug, the ropes imprisoning her fall away, and she can feel the blood rushing back into her arms and legs. It’s almost euphoric even though it hurts, like needles pricking under her skin, and she stands even though she knows it’s a bad idea just because she finally can. Predictably, she stumbles, and Bythesea rises to catch her. Lucas catches her, too, although instead of slipping his arm around her waist as Christian does, he loops it over her head and gets her in a chokehold.

“I’d object to your handling of me,” she wheezes, “but I think this was probably my fault.”

“No sudden movements around spies, rule number one,” Pearce says, cultured voice mild. “Lucas, enough.” 

He releases her, shooting a scathing look at Bythesea as the mathematician helps lower her back into the chair. His hand lingers at the curve of her hip for a second longer than it ought, which she doesn’t mind but Lucas seems irritated by.

“Can we get on with it then?” he asks.

“Get on with what?” Bythesea responds, though his sparkling green eyes never leave hers.

“The interrogation.” The emphasis Lucas gives this last word paints a very clear mental picture of the methods he’s likely to employ; visions of electrocution and waterboarding dance in her head.

Pearce sighs. “Very well. Christian, will you wait outside please?”

“I’d prefer to stay, if I might,” he says, but Charlotte knows it’s a lost cause even before Lucas and Pearce both object. There is some arguing back and forth but it all ends with Bythesea exiting stage left, casting one long lingering glance over his shoulder at her as the door swings shut. 

“Well then, gentlemen,” she begins, looking up at the two men before her. She knows Lucas is dangerous, feels it in every cell of her body, but realizes Harry must be dangerous, too; perhaps even more so because she doesn’t sense it. “What would you like to know?”


	3. Chapter 3

Everything, as it turns out. They would like to know literally everything, and because they say they’re MI-5 and she believes them, Charlotte does her best to oblige them. This is easier said than done considering the fact that they fire off their questions like characters in a Michael Bay movie shooting blanks, one after the other after the other. Sometimes they ask the same question several different ways, objecting if the answers are too dissimilar… Or too similar. Apparently there’s a sweet spot of just-similar-enough and she fails to hit it more often than not. Of course, there are also times where they just flat-out don’t believe her. 

“You claim you have no romantic attachment to Zaytsev,” Lucas says, bringing up an issue that has already been talked to death as far as she’s concerned, “yet you also claim you haven’t been on a single date since he returned to Russia three years ago.” 

“Yes.” 

“Surely you see how those two things don’t add up?” Pearce asks – but no, he’s told her to call him Sir Harry. “A pretty, intelligent girl like yourself, it stands to reason you’d be seeing someone new if your heart were not already engaged.” 

The first time he’d made that argument, she’d laughed. Her laughter had faded with each repetition until now, when she doesn’t even bother to crack a smile.

“Are you sure you weren’t sent by my mother?” Charlotte certainly wouldn’t put it past the woman to think being held hostage by men with guns would improve her social life. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’ve been busy.” 

“Busy helping Zaytsev design nuclear bombs for the Russians?” Lucas’s voice is cold, as cold as his eyes, and both have only grown colder over the long hours of interrogation.

She sighs and buries her face in her hands, wishing with every fiber of her being that when she raises her head, she’ll be back at her desk, waking from a very frustrating dream. Unfortunately, when she attempts it, she’s still being interrogated. 

“Look. You can ask me about this however many times you like, using whatever different sentence structures you like, my answer will never change,” she says. “Maybe you could waterboard me, speed up the process a bit.” 

She’s only kidding, obviously, but based on the fact that Sir Harry and Lucas proceed to have a quick, utterly opaque conversation using nothing but raised eyebrows and little facial twitches, it seems they might be considering it. The fear she has been fighting to contain threatens to break free as she tries to ignore how dire her situation is. If nothing else, the hours of questioning have shown that they genuinely, legitimately believe she might be a spy, and they are word-of-god certain that she is conspiring with Alexei. 

Maybe they should torture her after all, she thinks almost hysterically. She’s running out of ways to say she isn’t plotting with the Russians to blow up the world or whatever it is they suspect the Russians are up to, and none of the ways she’s tried so far have convinced them. 

“We’re not going to waterboard you,” Sir Harry finally announces, and she isn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. “But none of this adds up. Why would he call you just when he did?” 

“I don’t know.” She frowns, thinking about that last phone call. It had been very strange. “Don’t you have a recording of it somewhere? Haven’t you been following me, listening in on my conversations?”

“We’ve had you under surveillance,” Lucas concedes, and she wonders suddenly if he ever trailed her. The illogical part of her brain whispers that it’s not possible, that she would have sensed those unnerving eyes on her if ever he had, but the scientist in her knows that’s bollocks. It feels true, though, especially when he looks at her and her breath catches in her throat. “And you know we bugged your phone; you found it and disabled it.”

“What?” she asks, confused, before laughing. “Would dropping my phone in the tub have done it? Because that happened a few days ago. I’ve been suffering with a Nokia from 2004 ever since.” 

“That would have shorted out our connection, yes,” Sir Harry says, and he clearly does not find it funny at all. He clearly believes she knew what they were doing and knew how to counter it. It’s just… Bizarre, that anyone who should know better would think that of her. 

She considers telling him so but doesn’t think it will help. “That’s unfortunate, because I didn’t understand above one word in ten of that last phone call.” 

“Why not? Was Zaytsev speaking in code?” Sir Harry seems to perk up at the thought. 

“No, just Russian, but my Russian is terrible,” she answers. “I suppose I should brush up on it before my inevitable defection to the former Soviet Union.” 

Again, no one laughs, and she decides not to make any more jokes that might have them changing their mind about torturing her. 

“Can you remember what he said at all?” Lucas demands. “Even just what it sounded like?” 

“Well he started off saying something about how he was sorry and he fucked up.” She sees Lucas and Sir Harry exchange meaningful glances but cannot hope to interpret them. “Then he said… Something like…  _Voz-mite poda-rok, ko-tory ya pos-lal vas, i be-zhat_. Oh, and  _Skryt_. Is that a word? I think he was telling me to hide the keychain he gave me for Christmas.”

“Probably  _Возьмите подарок, который я послал вас, и бежать_ ,” Lucas says, his Russian as flawless as his English as far as she can tell. “ _Take the gift I sent you and run. Hide._ ”

Sir Harry purses his lips. “And this gift, did you take it?” 

“What? No. I didn’t understand what he was saying.” She can feel her lips twisting into an involuntary frown. “If he knew you were coming for me he should have warned me sooner.” 

“Would you have listened to him?” Lucas looks at her intently, intensely, and those eyes of his are no joke. 

“Probably,” she admits, even though she knows he won’t like it, and he doesn’t – she can tell by the way his gaze narrows. “He’s my friend. I’d listen if he thought it was important. If he thought I was in danger. If he used English, for the love of god.” 

“What is this gift he sent you?” Sir Harry’s voice is almost casual but it’s obvious the question isn’t; his shoulders are tense, and so is the atmosphere in the interrogation room as he asks it. 

“It’s nothing,” she answers with a shrug. “Just a TARDIS keychain. I got him hooked on Dr. Who when he lived here, it was kind of our thing.” 

“Tracking device, maybe,” Lucas offers, and Sir Harry nods, troubled. “Some kind of weapon…” 

Charlotte shakes her head. “Oh my god, it’s just a keychain.”

“I doubt that very much,” Sir Harry says quietly. 

He sounds so certain, and he’s an expert so his certainty gives her pause. He’s wrong about her, but what if he’s right about everything else, right about Alexei? Sweet, goofy, absentminded Alexei… She thinks about the phone call, remembers the urgency of his words, the tone in them, the way the line was so suddenly cut off, and she can feel a suspicious pressure behind her eyes.

“Is he dead, do you think?” Despite her best efforts, her voice breaks slightly. “God, Alexei, what have you gotten yourself into?”

“What has he gotten  _you_ into, that would be the better question,” Sir Harry murmurs. “And I very much doubt he’s dead. How many physicists can do what he does?” 

“Not a single one,” she says with complete assurance, the thought enough to allow her to blink her tears away. “He’s… Next-level brilliant. But he doesn’t care about… Countries, or politics, or anything like that. He’s like me. He only cares about the work, the magic.” 

“The magic?” Lucas asks. 

“Yes, that feeling…” she trails off, struggling to put the euphoria of discovery into words. “When you understand something so completely it’s like being inside it, and you can see everything, all the ways it fits together, and you realize you’re seeing something no one else ever has and it’s like… Just magic, pure magic.”

Lucas compresses his already thin lips into an even thinner line. “And if the Russian government were offering to finance that magic?” 

“I don’t know.” Alexei is unlikely to be politically motivated, she’s certain, but he’s unlikely to be politically unmotivated, too. As in, he cares so little about politics she doubts he’d be bothered enough by them to balk at any offer. “He’s not a bad person. He’s not cruel. But he might not realize… Might not understand…” 

“And you?” Sir Harry begins, looking at her sharply. “Do you care who finances what you do?” 

“No one wants to finance what I do. It’s completely useless, no practical application whatsoever.” She grins a little, proud of that fact. She’s strangely fond of her discoveries, of her fancy new math, pleased that it’s all art for art’s sake.

“And yet Bythesea wrote a paper about applying it to microchip technology,” Lucas prompts. 

“Well, yes, I suppose,” Charlotte says, smile fading. “But I only skimmed it. I don’t care about microchips.” 

“I thought you said it was very exciting?” There is something in Lucas’s voice as he says this, a kind of sneer, though she can’t imagine why.

“I’m sure it is,” she shrugs. “That doesn’t mean I care about it. But please don’t tell Dr. Bythesea,” she adds uncomfortably. “He seemed so happy when I told him I’d read it.” 

“We should bring in Bythesea,” Sir Harry suggests. “Perhaps he can help us determine what use Dr. Warren’s work might be to the Russians.” 

“Bythesea is probably long gone, Harry.” Lucas glances at the subtly expensive watch on his wrist. “It’s well past his bedtime.”

“Mine too,” she mutters, even though she has no subtly expensive watch to tell her so. She doesn’t need one. Her exhaustion is overpowering and she’s starving, though that knowledge is more intellectual than physical. She’s used to going without food for long periods of time, often forgetting to eat while in the grips of the strange mania her work sometimes induces. “How long have we been at this?” 

“You can be proud, you’ve managed to withstand 10 hours of questioning. Quite respectable,” Sir Harry says. 

“Not enhanced questioning, though,” she points out. 

“Maybe tomorrow,” Lucas deadpans… Or perhaps he’s serious.

“So I’m free to go then?” Charlotte asks, hesitantly. Somehow she doubts it, but she has no idea what they’ll do with her otherwise. Make her sleep at the table? She can work with that, though she’d prefer a bed. Right now she’s not inclined to be too picky. 

“You’re not that naïve,” Sir Harry chides, confirming her suspicions. “Nothing you’ve said has made us think we’ve been mistaken, and even if we are, you’re still a potential asset and potential target. We need to keep you contained and keep you safe.”

“And where do you intend to keep me?”

“Lucas will escort you to a safehouse for the night.” Lucas looks up sharply; clearly this is news to him, unwelcome news at that. “Tomorrow he will take you to your flat and you can bring us this gift we’ve heard so much about. And then… We’ll all know where we stand.”

Sir Harry’s expression is resolute, searching, as though he expects her to break down and confess to espionage and terrorism based on the force of his will alone. Obviously, she doesn’t. She finds her own resolution hardening instead.

“It’s just a keychain,” she repeats, hoping, Like Sir Harry, that the force of her will can make it so.  _Alexei, please... Please._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this fandom isn't exactly hoppin' but I really appreciate anyone who's bothering to read this :) A little comment or two would not go amiss if you have the time... <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive me for abandoning you all! I had a massive case of writer's block. Still do, truth be told, but I did my best here. Any feedback is much appreciated!
> 
> Also, please note: I'm American but doing the best with the Britishisms. As I understand it "pants" are the equivalent of "underwear" in America. This becomes important later (but don't get too excited yet, it's not what you're hoping).

It really isn’t fair. That much is perfectly clear to Charlotte as she lies on an uncomfortable narrow mattress, staring up at the darkness hiding the ceiling of her room in the safehouse. It isn’t fair that after a full day of being drugged, kidnapped and interrogated, after surviving the resentful silence in the car on the way over from Thames House, after dealing with Lucas’s black mood and even blacker glares – as though she were the one insisting he babysit her! – after all of that, it is utterly unfair that she can’t sleep. Her muscles ache with exhaustion. Pain throbs behind her eyes in protest of the fact that they’re still open. Every cell of her body feels heavy and drained, every nerve cries out for numbness, her very synapses yearn for unconsciousness, and yet…

She’d say it was a bloody nightmare, but at least if it were she’d actually be sleeping.

Instead she can feel her blood buzzing in her veins. It’s a not-unfamiliar sensation, usually the result of massive quantities of caffeine. Tonight she assumes it’s the result of adrenaline. Her thoughts buzz similarly, flitting from Alexei’s supposed treachery to her forms’ supposed viability in real-world applications to Lucas, to the way the lines etched between his brows and bracketing his mouth (none of which detracted from the breathtaking architecture of his face) grew deeper and deeper the closer they got to the safehouse. 

There’s a mystery there, a mystery every bit as opaque as all the others, something more than dislike making him tense at the thought of spending the night watching her. The possibilities draw her scattered attention as much as the endless Cabral-Warren forms dancing in her head, weaving between remembered snippets of Bythesea’s paper. It’s exhausting. And irritating, too; she loathes being so awake in the dark, lying there uselessly, knowing sleep will never come.

She sighs and sits up, rubbing her hand across her face. The energy she still feels will allow her to be still no longer. She must move, so she slips out of bed and pads barefooted to the door of her room, opening it as silently as she can so as not to wake Lucas. He’s only one room away, and the last thing she needs is his pale eyes fixed on her, sending shivers down her spine and making her nervous.

The safehouse is silent, the hallway pitch dark, but she feels her way along the wall until it leads her to the front room. MI-5 apparently didn’t see fit to furnish this particular hideout much, as there is only a settee along the far wall, and she has plenty of room to pace. She lets the repetitive motion of placing one foot in front of the other soothe her even as her mind turns once more to the tangled mess her life and life’s work has suddenly become. 

She’s in trouble, and she can handle that, but Alexei is far less worldly than she. The thought of him in trouble, of him at the mercy of… Whoever wants to use his knowledge for whatever evil MI-5 suspects… That worries her. He’s the very embodiment of the absentminded professor, far too vague and distracted to deal with reality, much less interrogation or, god forbid, enhanced interrogation. The worst part is knowing that somehow her work is related to what’s happening to him. If only she could figure out what dangerous real-world use her forms might have. If only she’d bothered to read Bythesea’s paper –

There is no sound, no movement, but suddenly there’s a feeling on the back of her neck, chilling and burning all at once, and she knows without a doubt that Lucas is watching her. Even if there had been a doubt, it would have been erased by the soft mechanical click she hears moments later. Though her heart gives a little stutter at it, she’s not afraid, or not much. Lucas has his orders, and she’s pretty sure they don’t involve shooting her dead, not until she hands over Alexei’s keychain at least.

“I wasn’t trying to run, I swear,” she says, raising her hands and turning slowly in the direction of the sound. As she faces him she is suddenly very aware that she’s wearing nothing but an oversized t-shirt, and of the way its hem has hiked up to bare her thighs. Although really it might be better to be aware of the deadly weapon he’s aiming at her. Why is it that every time he has a gun on her, it’s far from the first thing on her mind?

He lowers his weapon in a single swift movement, and even in silhouette she can see how every muscle in his body relaxes. She hears some shuffling from his general direction and then suddenly light is flooding the room, blinding her for an instant before her eyes adjust. The dark Lucas-shaped blob near the switch slowly resolves itself into the sight of him standing there in a black thermal and gray sweats, his hair in disarray. It makes him look softer, human, and makes her heart race in a way being held at gunpoint did not.

“If you were trying to run, I wouldn’t need to shoot you to stop you,” he says tersely. “I didn’t know it was you.”

“This is like the no sudden movements around spies thing, isn’t it?” she asks, feeling every inch the fool she is. Of course sneaking around in the dark when there’s a highly trained agent on alert for anything suspicious is a terrible idea. His senses are probably so finely honed that he could hear her thinking about getting out of bed before she even decided to do it.

“Yes.” 

“Oh.”

For a moment he just stands there looking at her, and there is a long silence that confuses her until he raises his eyebrow. That’s when she realizes he expects her to saunter past him and head back to her room just as though he’s not blocking the hallway, just as though her sleeve might not brush against him, just as though she’s wearing pants. Which she isn’t. Which maybe he doesn’t know but… Whatever, she knows it and it makes her feel strange and awkward.

“Um,” she begins, very intelligently. “I’m just going to put the kettle on, if that’s alright.” It’s the thing to do when one can’t sleep, she knows, and besides, walking through to the kitchen will save her the indignity of being practically naked right next to him. People are always telling her she’s a genius. Right now she actually feels like one, because it’s a totally brilliant plan.

“I’ll join you.”

Alright, perhaps not so brilliant.

“Right.” 

Charlotte harbors no illusions about her appearance. Her body, much like her face, is something that makes her neither proud nor ashamed as it is neither fat nor thin, neither flabby nor toned, just… There, something to cart her brain around in. Yet just this once she wishes some Russian terrorists would show up and kidnap her immediately to save her the indignity of preceding him, pantsless, to the kitchen. With her arms lowered the hem of the shirt she wears reaches nearly to her knees – amidst all her average traits, she is decidedly shorter than the mean – but she still has to fight the urge to tug it down just to make sure everything is decently covered.

Somehow, she manages to resist. Being so aware of him and so nervous around him is bad enough; she can only imagine how humiliating it would be if he knew it. Upon reaching the kitchen, she makes a show of hunting for a kettle, though modesty forbids reaching for it when she finds it. Naturally it’s on the highest shelf, one she could barely reach if she raised her arm and jumped, but that would bring the hem of her shirt practically to her waist and she is just not that desperate for a cuppa.

“Allow me,” Lucas says, stepping up behind her, and she is terribly alarmed by the feel of his warmth so close to her.

“Thank you.” She darts under his reaching arm and away as quickly as she dares – no sudden movements around spies! She’s learning! – and practically throws herself into one of the chairs surrounding the kitchen table.

Her hopes, admittedly unfounded, that he might head back to bed and leave her to her thoughts are cruelly dashed when he puts the kettle on for her. But god how she wishes he’d go. She can’t think with him moving about, or standing around, or… Really with him being in the room at all, looking at her.

He takes the seat across from her as he waits for the kettle to boil – no fancy electric kettles in MI-5 safehouses, apparently – and again she notes the deep lines framing his thin lips, the tired circles under his eyes.

“You can’t sleep either?” She asks, just for something to say, but she stares in fascination at the briefest flash of something deep and dark in his expression before it disappears without a trace. If not for the fact that the sight of it made her chest ache for him, she’d almost think she’d imagined it. But she knows she saw it, she knows because it hurt.

“Maybe I’m not supposed to,” he says wryly, mouth twisting in a smirk, and she wonders how he can smile like that after feeling whatever it was she saw. “Maybe I’m supposed to be observing you.”

“In case I get up in the middle of the night to do some evil Russian maths?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m not,” she mutters, mentally tacking on more’s the pity. People are hard. Interaction is hard. Deciphering facial expressions is hard. But maths, evil or Russian or otherwise, maths always makes sense.

Just to avoid the painful beauty of his face, just to have something else to look at, Charlie’s eyes drop to his hands resting on the table. It’s not much help, not really; there is no part of him, it seems, that isn’t beautiful, and his long fingers are especially so. A more romantic person might say his hands are those of a musician, and they very well might be, but to her they look like the hands of a mathematician, all slender yet strong, pale and elegant.

She smirks a bit at herself. She is becoming fanciful in her captivity.

Perhaps sensing her interest, his fingers twitch restlessly, enough that they reveal something unexpected: a tattoo on his left wrist. It seems so out of place, and the glimpse was so swift she almost thinks that she imagined it, but before she can tell herself she must have she’s already reaching out to gently grasp his hand.

She absorbs his warmth through her fingertips, feels the smoothness of his skin beneath her touch, the steady thrum of his pulse, and later she’ll feel embarrassed for touching him. But for now she turns his hand over, pushing up his sleeve for a better look at the five blue dots hidden there.

“I didn’t know MI-5 allowed tattoos,” she says, glancing up to meet his glare.

His lips are pressed together so that they've all but disappeared, his jaw is clenched, and she releases her hold on him. But his warmth, that she takes with her, melted into her flesh so that it burns.

“It depends on the tattoo,” he bites out finally. “And where it was acquired.” 

“I’m sorry. It’s just… It’s strange. Alexei has the exact same tattoo.”


End file.
